Monday, November 18, 2013

Enough: Will George Zimmerman (Finally) Be Stripped of His Honorary Whiteness by Conservatives?

Trayvon Martin is still dead.

In the months and years before he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman was arrested for fighting with the police, accused of molesting a family member, committing domestic battery, violated the rules of being a member of the neighborhood watch by carrying a weapon while on "duty", and was on mood altering drugs.

George Zimmerman was and is a ticking time bomb of violence. And I would not be surprised if Zimmerman is eventually diagnosed as being sociopathic.

I wrote many essays about the Trayvon Martin murder case as I tried to work through what his death by a street vigilante revealed about the intersections of race, crime, and the law in the United States.

Yet, months after Zimmerman's acquittal, I am still vexed by how conservatives, colorblind racists, and the Gun Right (to the degree such a cohort can be disentangled) could flock to his defense. He is a serial loser. Why make Zimmerman the flag bearer and martyr figure for the cause of "gun rights?" Who could reasonably imagine George Zimmerman as a "victim?"

In private, many of Zimmerman's defenders likely knew that he was an irresponsible person and guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin. However, their public commitment to white supremacy and symbolic racism trumps reason, ethics, and a broad humanism which embraces black Americans as worth the same protections and citizenship rights as white people.

Black Americans, because of their historical memory and lived experiences, are highly attuned to threats of racially motivated violence by people like George Zimmerman. The Black Freedom Struggle would not have triumphed over the racial terrorism of slavery, as well as Jim and Jane Crow, without those survival skills.

George Zimmerman's arrest for domestic violence is only a "surprise" for the most in denial and willfully ignorant members of the American public--and for those whose commitment to the Gun Gods have otherwise damaged their ability to think in a critical and reflective manner.

During the murder trial, Trayvon Martin's friend Rachel Jaentel was mocked, derided, and publicly lambasted by George Zimmerman's defenders and the Right-wing media. Her retelling of Trayvon's fear-laced observation that he was being stalked by a "creepy ass cracker" was proven accurate (again) by Zimmerman's arrest for domestic violence and threatening his pregnant girlfriend with a shotgun on Monday of this week.

I wonder: how long until George Zimmerman is stripped of his honorary Whiteness by the White Right? Or does the Right's misogyny and love of guns trump their defense of white women against domestic violence?

So she shows up and takes his $100, leaves the apartment and gives the money to her pimp. He followed her, thinking she was going to rob him. He shot their car several times, paralyzing and hospitalizing her for months before she died.

He was taken to court, where a judge declared he was only defending his property or some shit. Released for shooting a prostitute he hired who tried to steal $100.

I always wondered if he was arrested for at least soliciting a prostitute, so I'm looking at articles about it again.

It appears they arrested Ezekiel Gilbert for aggravated assault at first, because she survived the shooting. 7 months later, she died as a result of the shooting and the prosecution change the charge to murder.Perhaps they assumed they would get him for the bigger charge and neglected the lighter charge of solicitation. Or maybe he had served enough time to drop the lighter charge already.

It baffles and hurts me to think of the rationalization behind the decision to acquit him. Even though he aimed an AK-47 at a car and opened fire, 'they believed Gilbert didn’t mean to shoot her.'

It's as if they intentionally completely bend and distort reality to prevent punishing this person.

This was heartening to read before I head out the door. Who didn't know that we would not hear the last from him? Maybe this time, they can give him some time so that the people of Fl. can rest a little easier. If only for a few years.

Misogyny runs deep on the right. Excuses will be made - he said/she said. And it looks like she wasn't pregnant after all, so ya know, no real harm done. AmIrite?

Oh wait. I just checked the girlfriend's pictures. She's like white-white. Blond hair white. This could be a problem for ol' George. Still. He's useful if convicted. "It was the Obama Chicago-style political machine that brung him down!"

If you want a good laugh read the comments over at the Free Republic. Their theory is that he has ptsd from being "harassed" and "unfairly prosecuted" by Obama, Sharpton, the liberal media, holder, etc. They are sick people.

They will fixate on if she is pregnant or not of course and some other distraction. He looks almost happy in his mug shots. Zimmerman is sick.

I've posted here before enough, I think, to make my feelings known on this particular humanoid creature as well as the general fucked uppery of race relations in my homeland. As a black person, I defnitely think this woman comes out of the situation both physically better and looking better to the media than I would have. As a woman, however, I will point out a brief intersectionality here -- domestic violence is the LEADING cause of death for pregnant women in the US, across races.

(Granted, they didn't give up searching, for example, for Laci Peterson's killer until they found him, and that attitude is entrenched in the system -- and I've had white Southern cops of questionable racial enlightenment complain to me sincerely and at length about how few resources they are allowed when, for example, a kidnapped child is a person of color or even a boy -- but Peterson is still dead.)

I won't be too bitter if this is the thing that gets him sent down. It's very far from a satisfying, full karmic retribution, but at least it feels less... I dunno, *futile*.

And I would not be surprised if Zimmerman is eventually diagnosed as being sociopathic.Neither would I. At the very least, he's a violent man who has no business owning, let alone carrying a firearm. He could very well lose his CCW privileges if he comes out of his latest legal scrape with a felony conviction.For my money, the most disturbing part of the trial's aftermath--and the most telling indicator of the kind of man he is-- was Zimmerman's victory tour, where he reveled in his newfound status as a wingnut hero and visited the manufacturer of the weapon he used to kill Martin, happily posing for photos at the assembly plant.From what I've read, most people who kill in genuine self-defense still feel tremendous guilt and remorse. Taking another person's life, even when you had no choice, can be profoundly traumatic, and a terrible burden to live with.In that context, Zimmerman's self-satisfied gloating is genuinely frightening.

Agree with every word. Not to mention the sociopathy of the manufacturers who set up the photo op -- a sociopathy somewhat diffuse for being less concentrated all in one individual, but still frightening considering corporate power. What is WRONG with people...

Aren't AK-47s illegal? What exactly is the intention when you fire an assault weapon at a car with people in it? It's amazing how many knots people will twist themselves into to avoid punishing someone for a crime. They did everything but actually say "she's just a hooker."

The Right withdrawing his "honorary whiteness"? It was the MSM that fell over itself to label him a White Hispanic, the better to float the idea that there is a wave of white-on-black terror engulfing the nation. Who had ever heard of such a person as a white hispanic before this case?

Hmmmm...sociologists, political scientists, well read laypeople, folks who did just a tiny bit of research on race and politics and escaped the right-wing echo chamber where "white hispanic" was an amazing discovery. Hispanics are an ethnic/cultural group--really a creation of the census during Nixon--and can be of any color.

Zimmerman is white identified, his father is a white racist, and Zimmerman's clan and his upbringing are deeply rooted in the white racial frame and white supremacy. If you haven't do check out my interview with Professor Matt Hughey on the concept of whiteness and white supremacy to enlighten yourself--get the pun :)

If you look at fbi stats, the rise of hate groups, militias, and public opinion data on white racism during the age of obama, you may learn that things are not good out there.

I will respond to only a part of your generally well reasoned and stated remarks. CCW is not viewed as a "privilege" in Florida and the other states that have passed the NRA/ALEC automatic approval "shall Issue" laws. CCW is a right in their view. I happen to be of the opinion that open carry should be the legal requirement if one does pass a srtingent background check and that information be publically available as an accessible open public record and concealed carry only be available to law enforcement officers. CCW permits should be open record accessible as the default .

Oh wait... I take that back. Did you gt a chance to hear the 911 call he made? He calmly called 911 while the police were banging on the door, to get HIS side of the story out where he blamed her for the very thing he just heard her tell 911. We are getting a real perspective on what transpired between he and Trayvon.

There are idiots who welcomed Phil Spector back w/open arms. He didn't kill her, no harm, no foul. "They'll" have a talk w/him, redirect his murder game to those of correct color & profile. Strip him of his "honorary white card," neva dat! He murked one of us. Do you know how many bonus points/how many times he to pass go off that one kill? If that was a qualifier for issuance of credit he'd have a black card.

As a white person with mixed Mexican ancestry, see my 'ethnic sounding' last name as I have been told numerous times, there are 'white hispanics.' My great great grandparents were a partnership between Spanish and French in Mexico. They and their children moved to the United States and spoke Spanish. My great grandfather was teased about his language so much that in the sixth grade he dropped out of school.

I had always wondered how my parents could be so racist, which they have openly admitted to. Now that I have finally discovered that they were actually light skinned Spanish/French Mexican, they were likely prejudiced against the negro and mestizo Mexicans.

Coming to America, they abandoned any ethnic ties to Mexico, freely married with whites and I am assured to this day that I am a 'white non-Hispanic.'

you know, George Zimmerman was also likely reminded about how he is just 'not quite white' throughout his life. That could have caused him to go even further in the direction of trying to present himself as an acceptable white person among white society. I have also felt that I am somehow 'not quite white' by American standards of whiteness, ie. my 'ethnic sounding' last name.

I have encountered that attitude myself, to a very small degree. I once knew an elderly Colombian man, of aristocratic mien, who was rather contemptuous of the Mexican and central American immigrants to his neighborhood.

One pundit said that Zimmerman's problem was that he had a "Z" at the wrong end of his name. If his name had been Sanchez or Lopez or Gonzalez, he claimed, the media drama would have been spun quite differently.

Are you suggesting that people were simply upset because they thought a white guy hurt a black guy and not because Trayvon was stalked and killed while his killer was allowed to walk? You must think blacks are that simplistic that we're incapable of seeing the circumstances without rolling our necks like "oh no this white boy didn't honey!" You remind me of the white supremacist who were scouring for every story of a black man shooting an unarmed white kid and asking "why you no mad at this?" Forgetting that those men were, you know, arrested, tried, convicted, sent to jail, system works, nothing to march about. I don't get folk like you at all.

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Who is Chauncey DeVega?

I have been a guest on the BBC, National Public Radio, Ring of Fire Radio, Ed Schultz, Sirius XM's Make it Plain, Joshua Holland's Alternet Radio Hour, the Thom Hartmann radio show, the Burt Cohen show, and Our Common Ground.

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I am a contributing writer for Salon and Alternet.

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